As we’re starting to wind into the Holiday season (already!!!) we thought we’d put out a couple of quick suggestions when you’re thinking about gifts for your high school aged friends, nieces, nephews…whatever.

We wanted to draw attention to two classic books that, more often than not, are left off of the standard curriculum. Many schools evade these two works because of the concepts and philosophies they bring up: Grapes of Wrath for it’s hard look into the American class system, and often brutal evaluation and glance into the working class conditions during the Dust Bowl and the Depression, and Atlas Shrugged because of it’s starch adherence and propagation of Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy, which, let’s just say, doesn’t get every principal in the world excited.

So now that I’ve given away the two winners for this Fall, let’s take a closer look at them.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck, as I’m sure you already know, is by far one of the greatest American authors of all time. He has a large collection of classic works, which includes The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, Winter of Our Discontent, The Pearl, and, of course, Of Mice and Men.

While he is a popular author to read in high school, most schools focus on Of Mice and Men, and leave Grapes of Wrath off of their lists, due in part because of it’s sheer epic length, and in part because it deals with a number of really difficult themes surrounding poverty in America.

Even though the setting is 80 years ago, many of the conditions presented have a clear analogy to today’s world, and can be difficult to cover in the classroom.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

The second winner for this year is Atlas Shrugged. Again, this is an amazing classic American novel that is too often neglected in high schools across the country.

In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand presents a completely contrarian philosophy to that of Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath. Her Objectivist outlook describes a world where extreme greed and unrestrained Capitalism is the highest ideal, since she argues that greed is the only thing that motivates individuals to action.

Drawn to a further conclusion, our society exists because of the selfish achievers, and she argues that allowing this to exist unfettered is in our best interest as a society.

Again, this topic gets very complex very quickly, which is why many schools shy away from it, but it is still an important book for our high schoolers to be reading!

Ok, so you may or may not know this, but here at Gossip and Vice we’re all insanely passionate fans of The Voice, the American Idol-esque show on NBC that’s currently running in it’s 8th season.

Unlike the other talent shows, The Voice stands out for two reasons: 1) They have people that can actually sing, unlike the others that bring on tone deaf idiots to make a show out of them, and 2) The judges actually give insightful criticism, and don’t just yell at the contestants.

And, the fact that the judges (in the first round at least) can’t see the contestants, leads to some interesting choices of characters that might not otherwise be in the running.

Anyway, since the 8th season is in full swing, we thought we’d share a few of our favorite clips from the show.

Sydney Rhame’s Audition with Photograph

Definitely one of my favorite of the blind auditions, and it helps that I love Ed Sheeran.

Amy Vachal singing Dream a Little Dream of Me

My other favorite artist of Season 9 is Amy Vachal, a NY-based indie-singer. She absolutely steals the crowd and judges in this acoustic performance.

Battle Rounds!

Finally, I thought I’d share my favorite battle, with Jordan Smith and Regina Love. Two incredibly powerful voices that don’t just compete, but work together to give an absolutely stellar performance!

With the presidential primaries in full swing, and the crazy year of a thousand hopefuls finally narrowing down to the top few candidates, we’re left to pick from the “real” candidates and figure out who is the best bet going forward.

From the Democratic side, the only two choices are really Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, since the others (led by Jim Webb, O’Malley, and Chaffee) are all so far behind there’s no hope of catching up. Hell, one recent poll showed them lagging miles behind Joe Biden, who isn’t even running!

Our Pick: Bernie Sanders

By far the best part of Sanders’ platform is his stance that getting a good education means going to a reputable college, and that having a college degree is the equivalent of what having a high school degree 40-50 years ago meant.

In other words, if you don’t have a college degree in today’s world, you’re virtually unemployable and are relegated to low-wage jobs for your entire life.

It’s sad but true, and yet there are a surprising number of American families who have yet have a single family member go to college. Compare that to the fact that children of college graduates are about 100x more likely to graduate from college, the wage differences between college graduates and high school graduates, and you start to see a real picture of the American class system.

Then, factor in that Bernie’s plan makes Wall Street pay for a free college education system, and you see why we have a clear winner.

Not only is it essential to help break down class barriers, but it’s in our national economic best interest to produce highly educated individuals. That’s the only way that we, as a country, are going to be able to remain competitive in an international marketplace. Education leads to innovation, and future prosperity.

Once a purely gossip and style magazine, we’ve decided to completely rethink our role in the world, and expand our focus to talk about not just what’s going on with Katie Perry or the next hot Voice winner, but also to share some prominent news about education, culture, and society.

So, we plan on breaking the site down into several main categories for our blog posts.

Society and Style: This is, you guessed it!, a throwback to our early days, and while we’re not going to spend as much time and focus on this topic in the future, we still hope to include some of the important updates.

Arts and Culture. To be perfectly honest, this is my new favorite topic, and something I really want to be focusing in on as we move the blog forward. We’ll be sharing some of our views on everything from music to art to the best and hottest books of the year, so stay tuned for updates!

Education. Finally, we decided that no blog would be complete without a primary cause and political issue to champion. Our issue is education and, more specifically, the right for everyone to enjoy the highest quality education possible, at the lowest possible price! So, we’ll be sharing news and updates along this front as they appear.

That’s it for this post, and I hope you stay tuned as we start providing more info and updates on each of these topics!

As we’re starting to wind into the Holiday season (already!!!) we thought we’d put out a couple of quick suggestions when you’re thinking about gifts for your high school aged friends, nieces, nephews…whatever. We wanted to draw attention to two classic books that, more often than not, are left off of the standard curriculum. Many schools evade these two works because of the concepts and philosophies they bring up: Grapes of Wrath for it’s hard look into the American class system, and often brutal evaluation and glance into the working class conditions during the Dust Bowl and the Depression, and… Continue Reading →

With the presidential primaries in full swing, and the crazy year of a thousand hopefuls finally narrowing down to the top few candidates, we’re left to pick from the “real” candidates and figure out who is the best bet going forward. From the Democratic side, the only two choices are really Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, since the others (led by Jim Webb, O’Malley, and Chaffee) are all so far behind there’s no hope of catching up. Hell, one recent poll showed them lagging miles behind Joe Biden, who isn’t even running! Our Pick: Bernie Sanders In our view, the… Continue Reading →

Welcome to the relaunch of gossipandvice.com! Once a purely gossip and style magazine, we’ve decided to completely rethink our role in the world, and expand our focus to talk about not just what’s going on with Katie Perry or the… Continue Reading →

Ok, so you may or may not know this, but here at Gossip and Vice we’re all insanely passionate fans of The Voice, the American Idol-esque show on NBC that’s currently running in it’s 8th season. Unlike the other talent… Continue Reading →

With the presidential primaries in full swing, and the crazy year of a thousand hopefuls finally narrowing down to the top few candidates, we’re left to pick from the “real” candidates and figure out who is the best bet going… Continue Reading →